Bill McIntyre deftly typed-- > >A few months ago, I made a short-sighted comment that all the trouble >that many of you seemed to put into spam avoidance hardly seemed worth >the trouble, as it was simpler to just delete the few pieces I got each >day.
Welcome to the club (and as Groucho said, "I wouldn't want to belong to a club that admits people like me!). > >Of course reality soon caught up with me and I started receiving an >enormous amount of spam, so I accepted a kind offer from Karl Winkelmann >and he sent me a bunch of mail actions to fight the problem. For a while, >these mail actions worked and sent over half the spam to my deleted mail >folder. Of course I still had to look at the titles and senders to make >sure I wasn't deleting something important to me, but at least I didn't >have to delete twice- once from the in-box and then again from the >deleted mail folder. Scanning for false positives is the scourge of spam; the deliberately mis-spelled titles for blue, diamond-shaped pills, promises to alter certain body parts, offers to upgrade my education qualification, they are easy to spot. But how about the false positive called "order" that was tucked into the bottom of my deleted mail folder that was actually want it said it was--a nice $1,466.00 dollar order! > >Recently I became aware that almost no spam was being filtered to my >deleted mail folder. Does this mean that the spam slugs have adapted, and >all my mail actions are meaningless? If this is so, then I'm back where I >started, and am unwilling to be constantly engaged in modifying mail >actions to keep up with the problem. Its easier to just scan and delete. Everybodies needs are different; that said there are basic techniques. The most basic is maintaining/managing your address book. Presumably you want to receive email from those in your address book and not receive email from those not in the book. Set up a mail action that checks incoming mail against your address book. A simple "if from is not in address book" rule to route all mail from those not in your address book to the deleted mail folder will take care of the vast majority of spam. The problem here, as others will be quick to note, is that in the PC world, malicious code often scans the address book of people and sends mail to randomly chosen names in the address book. Thus if the organizer of your bike tour uses a PC and his/her address is in your address book (and vice versa) and if his/her PC is hit by a virus that randomly choses your name from his/her address book, you will receive spam. An alternative technique is to set up "disposable" addresses that you use to fill out online-forms, contests, etc. that are often harvested by spammers and other marketers. These may be changed regularly. Finally, create a non-obvious address (which can't be found in a dictionary) and give that email address only to trusted, Mac-using friends. I have two email addresses set up this way and I've never received spam on either of those addresses. The only people who know them are my mother and my aunt, who both use Macs at home and work. My sister, who uses a PC does not have this address. [snip] > >Meanwhile, I'm afraid to go on a scheduled 2 week bike tour in Provence. >If I can't get internet access fairly often to use my web mail to clean >out my server space, I'm afraid it will soon be totally filled and I'll >never see the few valuable posts that I do get. When is the bike tour? I'll be in the south of France myself the last two weeks of May. > >Bill McIntyre >San Clemente, CA bevon ___________________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe send a mail message with a SUBJECT line of "unsubscribe" to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
